Journals
Dev Journal
It's been awhile since I've written a dev journal and we've got some new faces around here, so I'll take the opportunity to introduce myself. I'm Cari Begle, and I'm Stardock's Senior Game Designer and the programming lead on Elemental. I've been working here at Stardock for 10 years. Today I'm going to talk about Multiplayer. I'll start with a quick rundown of the features for the people who haven't tried the beta, and then get into some techie talk for those of you ... [read more]
Dev Journal
Greetings! v1.09 work The team is hard at work this week on v1.09 which we expect to put out next week. It’s mostly fixes, memory optimization, performance optimization and hopefully some updated AI stuff from me. v1.1 development At the same time, we’ve been combing the forums and looking at all the suggestions to see the game from different perspectives. A lot of these ideas are going to make it into the first major game play update (v1.1) which will also serve as t... [read more]
Dev Journal
Elemental: Back in the Thick of It
Greetings! For those who didn’t know (and I don’t know if anyone cares) I’ve actually been out for the last two weeks, ‘expanding my dynasty’, so to speak (baby #2). It was a nice dose of reality coming off a pretty rough month - but you guys have been around the forums, so I wont churn that bucket of woes. Instead, I’d like to take a fresh look at where we stand right now. While my time away didn’t provide the rest I would have liked, it did get m... [read more]
Dev Journal
Elemental: War of Magic v1.08 Change Log
--------------------------------------------------- ----------- Elemental v1.08b Change Log ----------- --------------------------------------------------- We are on the process of putting up v1.08 of Elemental: War of Magic. Here’s a change log over v1.07: + LOD optimizations across improvements and tile designs + Continued memory optimization + AI handles its sovereign more intelligently + AI more effective at going after targets of opportunity ... [read more]
Dev Journal
This week’s “stuff”
They’re staging v1.08 tonight with the hopes for a general release tomorrow (no promises). The bulk of the team’s efforts have been on taking care of compatibility, performance, memory and stability both single player and multiplayer. In the near term, multiplayer is on the box so this has to be delivered and we apologize for the delay. After the initial launch of Elemental: War of Magic, we went back and did a post-mortem on how things could be done better and through this has emerge... [read more]
Dev Journal
Elemental: Making a Quest part 2
Yesterday, I wrote the general outline of how to make a quest. Today, we’ll get into the nitty gritty: My QuestPackage has these objects in it: The Quest Definition The Quest Location The Goodie Hut (Quest Destination) Tile Design of the Location Tile Design of the Destination (the goodie hut) Items 4 and 5 are generated by the tile editor in the workshop, I just pasted them in. The Quest Definition I. &... [read more]
Dev Journal
One of the requests from https://forums.elementalgame.com/396283 was to show how quests are done. Let’s walk through making a simple quest. Title: “An urgent message” Objective: Bring Dennis’s Note to the Master of Hounds Reward: Token of Man’s Best Friend Step #1: The Quest Location First, I load up the Builder’s Forge in the Workshop and make a suitable location. This is the home of Dennis Lacros. Dennis has been doing his part to help rid the area of wo... [read more]